The subject matter herein relates generally to electrical connectors, and more particularly, to a dielectric insert for retaining an electrical contact within the housing of an electrical connector.
Electrical connectors are used to electrically connect a wide variety of electrical components. For example, electrical drawer connectors are used to connect various workstations and other electrical components to wide-area network (WAN) and local-area network (LAN) servers. Drawer connectors typically include a housing that holds a plurality of electrical contacts having terminating segments that terminate electrical wires and/or electrical cables that extend from the server. The electrical contacts include mating segments that extend along a mating interface of the housing of the drawer connector. The housing can be mated with the mating connector of an electrical component at the mating interface to electrically connect the electrical component to the server.
The terminating segments of the electrical contacts of drawer connectors are sometimes held within a mounting cavity of the housing a dielectric insert and a metal retention clip. Specifically, the dielectric insert is first loaded into the mounting cavity of the housing. Thereafter, the metal retention clip is hand-loaded into a contact channel that extends through the dielectric insert, such that the dielectric insert extends around the metal retention clip. The electrical contact is then inserted into an opening within the metal retention clip such that the metal retention clip extends around the terminating segment of the electrical contact. The metal retention clip includes a plurality of fingers that extend radially inwardly and engage the terminating segment of the electrical contact to retain the electrical contact within the mounting cavity of the housing. Using the metal retention clip to retain the electrical contact within the mounting cavity is not without disadvantages. For example, the metal retention clip may increase a complexity and/or a number of components of the drawer connector, which may increase a cost of the drawer connector. Moreover, it may be difficult and/or time-consuming to separately load each of the dielectric insert, the metal retention clip, and the electrical contact within the mating cavity of the housing. The metal retention clip may therefore increase a cost, difficulty, and/or time of assembling the drawer connector.